Department of Igbo

Nigeria, as a multicultural and multilingual country saw the need to have indigenous languages that will give her identity in the comity of nations and also help her achieve the much needed unity, peace and cohesion as a country of diverse ethnic entities. This led to the search for the indigenous languages that will help achieve her objectives out of the hundreds of local languages in the country. The search, after many deliberations gave birth to the adoption of Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba as the national languages of Nigeria. It was made a national policy and enshrined in her National Policy on Education first published in 1977.

Following the inculcation and recognition of the Igbo language as one of the three national languages of Nigeria as was enshrined in the National Policy on Education of 1977, the Federal government mandated all the conventional colleges of education to establish departments of Nigerian languages in their institutions to train the teachers needed to project the objectives of the national languages policy of Nigeria. Federal Colleges of Education all the country took up the challenge to raise the teachers needed to teach and develop the Nigerian languages. The Federal College of Education, Obudu in Cross River state, as a Federal institute took up the task and quickly established the departments of Nigerian languages. Igbo language and culture department was established in the Federal College of Education, Obudu in 1986. The department was established and empowered to produce teachers of the middle level manpower in Igbo language and culture who will be awarded the Nigerian Certificate in Education (N. C. E) after a successful three year programme of studies. F.C.E Obudu runs the Igbo language studies: The Igbo language ! (L1) is mounted for native speakers of the Jgbo language while the Igbo language 2 (L2), is mounted for non-speakers of the Igbo language.

The programme of study in the Igbo language and Culture department is produced by the established commission by the Federal Government to oversee the programmes of study by College of Education in Nigeri, the National Commission for Colleges of Education in Nigeria, (NCCE). The course content of the programme is as released and enshrined in the NCCE minimum standards for languages in Nigeria. The department runs a three year programme that qualifies the student to get the National Certificate in Education of Nigeria.(N.C.E). The requirement for graduating as a trained professional Igbo language and Culture teacher is Course Work embodied with a written project by each student

The pioneer Head of Department was Miss Ifeoma Okafor. The department produced her first graduates in Igbo Language and Culture department in 1988. From the period of inception till date, the Igbo department has produced more than seven thousand (7000) Igbo language and culture graduates in both Igbo language L1 and Igbo language L2 studies. Igbo language and culture department has all the necessary qualified teachers in all branches of language studies including, linguistics, Literature and Culture. Our L2 and L1 students are gainfully engaged in public and private enterprises all the country in both academic and other areas of Endeavour.

Igbo department, F.C.E. Obudu has a modern language Laboratory equipped with the best and modern state of the arts equipment for functional language studies. We have a departmental Library with enough modern Igbo language books, we also have a language museum where one can see and learn about the Igbo artifacts. The students of Igbo department on L2 studies go for acculturation to the National Institute for Nigerian Languages (NILAND) IN Aba, Abia state for proper integration with the native Igbo language speakers before graduation. This helps the students a lot to have a physical interaction with the native speakers of the Language in a contemporary Igbo environment. The Igbo language and Culture department in FEDERAL College of Education, Obudu is working hard to project and achieve the objectives of the Nigerian government’ s national language Policy. The Igbo language and culture department is soliciting the cooperation and encouragement of all stakeholders in the national and the educational system to better equip them to carry out this important national task of producing graduates that will help make Nigeria a better country where unity, peace and love will reign.